AJ's Diary
by ThePink1 at Reefside.Net
Summary: A journal-type peek into the life of the newest Pink Ranger in Reefside.
1. Entry 1 Rethinking Pink

A.J.'s Diary, Entry # 1: Getting to Rethink Pink

**Disclaimer:** I've no legal franchise rights to any of the intellectual properties mentioned herein, including but not limited to the Power Rangers (in any incarnation), Marvel comics characters, Elfquest comics characters, the Amber novel series, Scholastic's Magic School Bus, Stargate or Robotech. All I can lay claim to is the characters of A.J., T.J., Kurt, Kay, Thom, Vance, Dawn, Feather, Emma, M.J., Pet, Kathara, Perry, & Manticore.

Memorial Day - May 25, 2015

Hey, diary, A.J. here. That's Alexandrea Jeanette Cranston, in case you didn't remember me. HS Junior, scion of Amber, Shapeshifter, and looking forward to summer vacation like you wouldn't believe! This last year has been KILLER. Here, let me catch you up.

September 2014:

I am a Power Ranger. Yes, one of THOSE Power Rangers. I'm the Pink Chameleon Mighty Morphing Power Ranger to be exact. At the start of this school year, my friends, my brother, and I were comfortably sitting around, dreading upcoming surprise exams and mystery meat lunches in relatively normal Reefside, California. Then my Best Friend Kay got this precognitive vision of Horrendous Doom for our hometown way of life. That's Kimberly Rachel Scott, sister of Thomas Jason Scott, (eventual) Girlfriend of yours truly's twin brother, Kurtus Adam Wagner. (I know, I know. How come you have different last names if you're twin brother and sister? We'll get back to that later, I promise.) And yes, Kay is the daughter of Jason Scott, original Red Ranger, and I'm the daughter of Billy, the original Blue Ranger, etcetera, etcetera. And I'm rambling. Sue me.

When we tracked down our parents at Uncle Tommy's with this Apocalyptic Tale, we found out that they were already preparing for it as best was possible. Namely, by calling all the Old Rangers to teleport back to Reefside just in case (Aunt Haley & Dad had managed to rebuild the old system in our garage from the remains of the Power Chamber eventually,) and to bring any old Coins, Morphers, or Crystals they still had. With every Ranger available from MMPR down through Mystic Knights available, you'd think ANY emergency'd be over with in a heartbeat.

NOOOO. Kay goes into another of her trances, starts handing out Power Coins from the pile of Morphinominal merchandise to me, herself, our sibs, and Marcy Bosch's son Thom, and suddenly, Thom's the Red Dragon Ranger, T.J.'s the White Tiger Ranger, Kurt's the Blue Crow Ranger, Kay's the Black Bear Ranger, and I'm holding the Pink Coin and wearing shiny armor with a skirt. (All this will change later, but that's part of the story.)

'Porting out moments later to match up against a squad of Superputties that suddenly appeared downtown in front of Yee's hardware, we were quickly disabused as to how easy these things were supposed to be to beat. Silently cursing our 'rents and their stories of the 'Good Old Days', the five of us waded in and tried the old 'smack the Z' maneuver, only to find out that, not only didn't the S-Ps disintegrate after three blows to their chest medal, but the emblazoned 'M' on them quickly informed us that we were definitely facing a NEW breed of evil.

Even as the 'putties rallied for a counterattack, Kay yelled out to call attention to a hulking figure in bronze armor with a giant golden sword, jet black feathered wings, and a scorpion's tail who was practically lounging against a light post nearby like he (it?) didn't have a care in the world, even as the new 'putty types were stomping us during our moment of distraction.

Rallying our wits, we produced our Power Weapons; Kay's Power Staff, Kurt had a Power Sword, T.J. produced the Power Axe, Thom's personal Sais became Power Weapons, & I wielded the Power Bow. These proved damaging enough to finish off the S-Ps. THAT finished, we whirled back to the Mystery Monster languishing on the lamp, only to find him APPLAUDING our VICTORY!

He bowed low with a flurry of wings and a swish of that menacing looking stinger, and informed us that from this day on, our peaceful lives were done; he'd come to finish the job his parents had started, and wished us a swift and total defeat, since such noble heroes tended to make poor slaves. (I could see T.J. and Kurt restraining (BARELY!) Kay between them as he delivered this message.) From the grembling issuing over her helmet mike, I just KNEW his head was not long for his shoulders.)

Sensing our belief in his ultimatum was a little lacking, (maybe because Kurt, Thom & I had started to assemble the Power Lance from our collective Weaponry,) the fiend spat out his name and a "See you soon!" as he disappeared in a fading rainbow swirl, his tail waving a taunting farewell at the last.

So that's how we found out we're fighting Manticore, the SON of GOLDAR (and Scorpina) of all people, for the future of Earth! As usual, our side ends up using Zords to waste Growsome monsters all over town, which does land values and insurance rates no good, but the Zords are cool, and they're good for tourism, so nobody minds. Right away, that is.

And that, sadly, is how our 2014 school year started. (BTW, the config for our Zords (for now) is: White Tiger, left leg; Pink Chameleon, right leg; Black Bear, body; Red Dragon, arms; & Blue Crow, head (which is really cool, 'cause we get this whole winged helm look.))


	2. Entry 2 In The Green For Halloween

A.J.'s Diary, Second entry: In the Green for Halloween

**Disclaimer:** See Entry # 1

October 2014:

All right, no grief please. I'm going to compost all the unimportant daily nonsense & just concentrate on the REAL story stuff here. For example: Manticore tended to attack every four days or so. Initially, it'd just be him, a dozen 'putties, & some lame monster that HAD to be rejects from ol' Finster's Bake Shop of Horrors. After we thrashed the first seven, Manty got the hint, and attack # 8 (well, 9 counting that first tussle with his S-Ps on Labor Day,) was a real eye-opener.

The 'putties were doubled in numbers, Manticore was LEADING the charge instead of hanging back & directing the action, and the monster was this sneaky little illusionist that kept making us think each other was a Superputty or Manticore! Fortunately, the enemy didn't know we had an edge against that kind of trick: all five of us have some latent telepathy, so sensing for each other under the rampant slew of foes was second nature after the second false attack.

I even got to demonstrate my proficiency with Shado-archery; closing off all external distractions and finding the little fink by instinct alone, I shattered the prism he was using to create the illusions with a shot from my Power Bow. Finishing him off and dusting the 'putties was short work after that, and Manty did his rainbow fade with his usual threat and curse.

About a month after school started, a new kid moved to town, and the Green Coin (yeah, THAT one) woke up and chose Cord Bennett to be the Green Mantis Ranger. His Zord added wings to our Megazord, as well as a kewl set of punching claws. Not long after, we found out that Cord was a Shapeshifter too, but he was still REALLY new to it, and he kept changing involuntarily, and NOT into cute fuzzies! He's cute, too, in between being a monster and being a Ranger. Unfortunately, he's only got eyes for Kay. (This is before Kurt started going out with her.)

To make THAT story short, by Halloween, Cord had his Changing under control. I started dating Thom, T.J. started dating this Sandy girl in the drama club, and Kay couldn't make up her mind between Cord and Kurt.

The Halloween ball was a blast! Thom and I went as Han Solo and Princess Leia (yeah, I know, those movies are positively ANTIQUE, but we looked killer.) T.J. and Sandy were going to go as Romeo & Juliet, since that was the play the theater class was prepping, but neither of them got the parts and they wanted to show off how great they would have been as the leads. Unfortunately, Sandy got hit by this freak stomach bug and missed the party, so T.J. came alone, and since he didn't have a Juliet and he didn't want to go as a lone Romeo, he went IN HIS RANGER ARMOR! (This wouldn't be so bad since there were already costume shops selling knockoffs of our Armors, but Kay takes that whole Secret Identity stuff MEGA-seriously and almost beat the complete CRAP out of her brother before we yanked her away from him at the party.)

Oh, yeah; she and Kurt went as X-Men: Kay as Dark Phoenix, and Kurt went au natural as Nightcrawler. (Our mom, Pet, is actually Killa Petra Wagner, daughter of Kurt Wagner and Kathara Stalker, and my brother is named after grandpa 'cause he's as blue and fuzzy as the original, with the tail and everything. He wears an image inducer since even though he can shapechange as well, he doesn't keep other forms without active concentration. He's a kicking teleporter though, so we're even.) Cord, who didn't know the X-comics (or any others (WEIRD!)), went as an Egyptian Pharaoh.

Our older sister Feather showed up just before Halloween (she was at the party too, as a werewolf,) to help Kira help Tori with something, healer-wise. That's Feather's Talent: Healing.

Of course Halloween was an attackable event, so having T.J. already Armored was a good thing after all. He kept Manticore's forces busy while the rest of us made sure the gym was cleared out safely, then Kurt 'ported us back in secretly to deal with the monsterthon. After Manty's monster (something Feather later called a Hook Horror) was smithereened, Kay made T.J. walk back home instead of sharing the Limo we'd all rented as punishment for going IN ARMOR of all things. (Not as bad as it sounds, Reefside isn't bigger than two miles squared.)


	3. Entry 3 Rhymes with Orange

A.J.'s Diary, Third entry: Fire up the Autumn Colors

**Disclaimer:** See Entry # 1

November 2014:

Soon after Feather showed up, the other Power Coins started awakening; The Yellow Coin claimed Hunter as the Yellow Fox Ranger, the Grey Coin chose Feather to become the Grey Wolf Ranger, and Thom's brother Vance became the Orange Badger Ranger. Three days after he joined the team, his GF Dawn got chosen by the Green Coin to become the Bat Ranger. (Why an extra Ranger for the same Coin? We asked the same thing!) It was because Cord suddenly got sick so bad his parents had to take him out of town to some specialist, and HEY! We thanked our lucky Grid we weren't going to be under-strength as a team.

Meanwhile, Manticore's attacks took a turn for the heinous, when he upgraded his troops from super putties (which he'd been using until then) to s.p.s and super tengu, which had been Rita's brother Rito's fave shocktroops. Suddenly having more Rangers who could fight in the air became really useful, although Dawn constantly whined about having to clean putty-clay and tengu grease out of her wings. (I swear, she might have been raised in a matriarchal society, but she is SUCH a prima donna all the same.)

Our worst battle so far came along just before Thanksgiving Break. This sneaky insectoid was sent down solo, and we didn't even know about him right away. We were out in the industrial sector stopping a bunch of super-putties from stealing some new experimental polymer compound for Manticore when our Tech Support called us from the Command Center (okay, my dad in our basement, ;D ) told us that the firefighters on the other side of town were contending with a 4-alarm that kept RELIGHTING on them, and that the police squads working crowd control had reported a suspicious flock of the 'large black birds' in the area. (Our bad mostly, I guess nobody ever told the authorities that they were called tengu.)

Splitting into our two 'squads', we original rangers stayed to finish off the 'putties, while Hunter (as senior Ranger) led the three newbies to check out the fire. Not ten seconds after they get there, Vance calls us to say that the fire keeps coming back because of a 'Firefly from Hell'. We clobbered the 'putties carrying the polymer, teleported it to our lab for safekeeping, and trooped across town to squash an empowered bug.

As soon as it saw Rangers, it grew from fly-sized to human(oid), and started to shoot handfuls of fire at us. Trying to clobber it up close was a nightmare, since as soon as someone got near enough to hit it, it shrank back to bug-scale and flew to a new sniping location. (This actually made things worse, since it was still setting everything it touched on fire in bug-form!)

I'm not sure who started the idea, probably Hunter or T.J., but somebody mentioned an asbestos flyswatter, and Invention Queen that she is, Kay went with it. Getting the Bosch brothers to help her round up the materials, she started assembling it off in a corner while Kurt and Dawn flew in anxious circles, directing the rest of us in our plan of herding Hellfly away from the flammable sections of town. (We lured him over to the beach, eventually.)

Kay got the swatter finished, and we were about to finish him off when the 'putties and tengu showed back up to help Manty's new monster. That was actually bad judgment on Evil's part; the tengus' greasy feathers were highly flammable, and Hellfly's fire was so hot, he made the super-putties brittle, so all we had to do to get rid of any of the minions was throw them at it.

Out of backup and cornered by asbestos and water, Hellfly broke its Growsome charm, and proceeded back to finish our home town off. Needless to say, we called out our Zords and thrashed him (it?) back to the shoreline. Then he showed off his best trick yet.

Just as we swung our Zword-blade (TM and © ME!) to finish it off, he shrank back down to person-size (!?! I know, right?) and started to run off. So T.J., in charge of the off-arm, grabbed the giant asbestos swatter, and smacked Hellfly back to that great bug-light in the sky. Everybody applauded his quick thinking, and Kay ALMOST forgave him for swatting her with it back in the melee on the beach. (As the 'muscle-man' of the group, T.J. had been given the giant swatter to wield.)


	4. Entry 4 Blue Christmas

A.J.'s Diary, Fourth entry: All we want for Christmas ...

**Disclaimer:** See Entry # 1

December 2014:

With schoolwork piling up and constant monster attacks, the year dragged into December, and just before Winter Break was gonna be the Yule Dance, which is always choice. Dawn and Vance were constantly almost breaking up, which was, as she told me later, what made makeup sex really good. (Ew.) And whatever Feather was doing with Tori was so intensive she ended up moving in with her and Blake. Hunter lives with them too, and Feather ended up having an affair with him. (Still is, for all I know.) The upshot of all her and Kira's work is that Tori can FINALLY have kids. While they were about that, Kira found out she was pregnant (and so was Uncle Tommy's wife, Samantha (FINALLY,)) and turned her Mystic Unicorn Ring over to Feather, so Feather had to turn her Coin in, but Cord was back, so he became Grey Mantis for a while.

So everybody had dates for the Dance, except Kurt, Cord, and Kay, and the two guys asked her within like seconds of each other, and she really couldn't pick between them objectively, so she panicked and went with BOTH. The dance went all right, except that at the end of the night, it turns out Kay HAD chosen between them, and spent most of the Ball on the dance floor with my sib, and Cord took that really bad.

It turns out Cord Bennett was short for Mante' Chorian ne'Benelythar. In other words: _Manticore!_ And when he wigged out and reformed in front of Kay and Kurt, Kay had a minor spaz all over him for messing with her head.

Unfortunately, Kurt wigged at Cord too, for mostly the same reason, but since this was over Kay as well, he completely lost it and ramped up into this huge blue Hulk-type and started wiping the gym floor with Manticore. Not the safest place for a super-monster slugfest, really, 'cause the floor caved into the boiler room, and Kay followed them in.

She tried to break the boys' fight up by doing one of her patented Rainbow Battlizer Blasts on Manticore, but some of it deflected into the boiler and blew the three of them through the school roof. After they landed in wildly separate spots, the only thing that kept my bro from pummelverizing Cord all the way through the school pool's floor was Kay getting right in front of him before he could wade in. Seeing her get bowled over did a Betty Ross to Kurt, and he changed back to normal just as Cord came to in the deep end.

Feather tried to check him over, but he just gave us all this really kicked puppy look and teleported away. Feather then tells us what her Healer's touch told her; Manticore is our cousin! (I've heard of keeping the business in the family, but this is really pushing some envelopes!) Seems that Grandma Kathara has a half-bro named Lynx whose father is Goldar's half-brother. It gets even more complicated from there, but that involves time paradoxes and somebody singing 'I'm my own grandpa' so let's just SKIP IT! On the upside (or the downside, 'cause he _is_ cute,) THAT'S why he never gave me (or my equally sweet sisses) the eye; we're RELATED! _Ugh,_ enough about that.

Catch ya on the flipside, A J.


End file.
